Inevitably, the talk leading up to tonight’s DKNY show on the High Line had to do with the brand’s sale earlier this summer by LVMH to G-III Apparel Group, the company that owns Andrew Marc, Vilebrequin, and Bass, and currently controls the licenses for labels such as Ivanka Trump and Calvin Klein. What would this mean for recently appointed DKNY creative directors Maxwell Osborne and Dao-Yi Chow? Would the honchos at G-III have a say in this collection? Would the vision for DKNY be meaningfully different?

The collection Osborne and Chow showed was effectively completed before the sale was announced, but by coincidence, its futuristic theme was fitting, given that the DKNY future is now unwritten. The fact that the design duo’s take on futurism had a, let’s say, dystopian mien was not, they made clear, anything to be read deeply into. Rather, the idea was merely to advance the DKNY signatures—the pinstripe tailoring, the activewear elements, the modular separates, the streetwise attitude – and project it some years hence, into a Blade Runner–ish Big Apple.

There was an interesting idea humming below the surface here. When Chow and Osborne hit their stride in this show, it was in their variations on certain looks—notably, the hoodie and the anorak—that augured a hunger for uniformity. It’s funny to think that Star Trek may have had it right all along: Perhaps the glut of consumer choice and the pressure to create a niche personal brand will eventually curdle, and backlash into a yearning to blend in, and be one of many. This DKNY show hinted at an aesthetics of collectivity, and its potential made you sit up a little straighter in your seat and pay attention. Perhaps Chow and Osborne will be permitted to continue to pursue that theme.